September 23rd
by WonWon101
Summary: A survivor's story


September brought a new sense of hope, at the arrival of Charlie. Little Charlie Tate, weighed 3.8kg, born in Riverside Hospital on the later part of the hour 10pm. A pivotal moment in time for my young family. But a short-lived one.

September 23rd 2013, 1.30am, Riverside Hospital, 2nd floor, Room 64

After the crying had ceased and he'd been fed, Charlie was now resting in the cot adjacent his mother, who too was sound asleep. He was a natural birth - Maria was a strong, determined woman. She'd had her mind made up since before Charlie's conception. I sat in the room, just the three of us, marvelling the distilled beauty of the scene. The room exuded idoform and overused air fresheners, but that didn't bother me. Maria and her newborn son had been asleep for about thirty minutes. Despite the hardship and excruciating pain of birth, Maria looked peaceful, if not, the most peaceful I had ever seen her. She'd never seemed weak or fragile, regardless of the current feed of oxygen to help her resperate properly. She often joked about the bulbous swell of her stomach as her weeks of pregnancy went by, and in many ways she supported me more than I did for her. Her determination to do things herself often worried me - not that I felt inadequate, but I felt rather concerned for her heath and well-being, as well as Charlie's. The added stress of work and house maintenance, on top of a baby, was more than nightmarish. I took a leave from work to "help" reduce her stress - I must concede, I did go about the role of being a husband and father by trying to remove Maria from her position as mother and wife, the other half of power, rather than involve her in sharing a reasonable amount of responsibility, which she so helpfully pointed out to me - and went so far as to move out from the main city to the countryside; a little, stereotypically British-styled village called Riverside Meadow. It was much cheaper to rent out a cottage than our city apartment, and on the whole it was a better place to raise Charlie and grow our family. It didn't take me long to find a job here either, and soon we had a steady current of income again. Life in the country was a lot easier than we had imagined. The claustrophobia of bunched complexes and clustered elevators and the occaisional shared bathroom was no longer an issue. The last time I had a backyard was when I was a child. Our house in Riverside was embedded in swathes of grass and the big oak beside the house pumped the surrounding air with fresh oxygen; not the second or third or god-knew-how-many-hand air from other apartments, and if you were situated near ground level and were so misfortunate enough to have adjustable windows, receive a generous cloud of pure, putrid pollution whenever you sought for fresh air. When birthed, Charlie's skin had a ghostly pale-blue glow to it, as though he'd been left in the bath for too long. Now his skin was pinker, as with each breath of oxygen his heart continued to circulate warm blood around his body. His skin temperature was only slightly below the norm for babies of his blood type and weight, however the doctor explained Charlie was a very healthy baby. I remember the instant the doctor handed him to me; his eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth contorted and toothless, his comical arms and legs flailing about, squealing and crying. I couldn't stop smiling. Neither could Maria. I loved my family. So very much.

I was woken by a nurse. My back ached from the poor ergonomics of the chair on which I was sitting. She seemed to be frantic about something.

"Wha-what?" I managed to utter.

Visiting hours didn't close until 3am. The clock above Maria's head shifted into focus and confirmed it was 1.45am.

"Sir! Wake up, sir!" She was shouting.

The nurse's voice was shaky and hoarse, as though she'd been shouting for a while. Her eyes were wide and she looked damned terrified about something. I caught the unmistakable blotching of red smeared over her neat, white uniform. Blood.

"What's happening?" I asked, nearing full consciousness.

"Get up! Follow me-"

She was interrupted by the sound of the bullet proof glass behind her shattering. Something dragged her by the ankles, yanked her to the ground with great force. The nurse was screaming, her red-painted nails shredding against the carpet trying to find purchase. Then I saw him. A man. His clothing was torn in several places and his eyes were obviously bloodshot, his sickly pale skin was covered with bumps of red swelling and blood trickled from his nose. He twisted the nurse around by the legs onto her front, and with horrific speed, ripped out her stomach with his hands. The nurse continued to scream, trying to push the head of the man away from her, as her intestines were being torn to shreds, but he promptly tore her fingers off with his teeth. In a rage he lunged straight for her neck and rived at it, cutting off her dying screams immediately. The man, or whatever the fuck it was, continued to feast off her corpse, tearing out sizeable chunks of the neck and face.

"What the hell..."

My legs instinctively propelled me backward, and I forgot I was still in the chair. My world tilted upward, so fast I saw stars. I landed flat on my back, jarred from the uncomfortable edge of the headrest. I stared at the ceiling for a brief moment before rolling off the chair and getting quickly to my feet. The man-thing still hadn't seen me, but judging by the rate it was devouring the nurse's body, it could at any moment. Maria and Charlie were behind me, still asleep. There was no way I could move them fast enough. Then I remember the door. The emergency door that enclosed off a portion of the room, retaining walls that ascended from the floor and locked into the ceiling. The device that activated it was on the wall beside the bed - yes, a red button covered with a safety latch. I lunged for it, flipped open the over and pushed the button. With immediate response, the walls began to rise, boxing Maria, Charlie and me inside. I had enough time to see the man-creature's head snap up and lock my eyes in a wild, angry stare, bits of the nurse's ragged flesh dripping from its mouth. All around me was concrete and metal. I turned to Maria and Charlie, who both continued to sleep soundly.

Must be the exhaustion, I thought.

I checked my cellphone. No signal. But mounted on the wall there was a telephone - as well as the nurse call button on Maria's bed. I picked it up. Nothing.

What the hell is going on?! - I didn't know if I said it or not.

It had to be a dream. I'd probably wake in the chair and the alarms ringing outside the emergency lock doors were the sound of the nurse trying to wake me because visiting hours were over. My brain was having a hard enough time processing all I had witnessed. The next few moments were hazy as I entered a state of wariness and panic. Maria's bed was spinning, the bright halogen lights burned my retinas. The world blurred and focused, warped and tilted. I began to question the fabric of my environment - the floor was liquid one moment, concrete the next; the ceiling bulged and walls collapsed. The phone rang on forever, at a volume that pierced my ears. Next thing I knew, I was hugging the trash bin, having vomited inside it. Well, I'd partially vomited in it. My aiming hadn't been entirely accurate, what with my groggy state, where I was frequently forgetting where and who I was, and a significant amount of the pale hydrochloric orange had ended up on the floor around the bin. Bemused at the sight of my clumsiness, I was getting the sense that I was dreaming, that I was just reliving events that had already taken place. How deep would this crazy nightmare go? What had I done next? When would I catch up to the present? Oh god, the alarms again...


End file.
